The Teacher

The Teacher: Part III Day of Declaration, Chapter 60

CHAPTER 60

THE MEETING IN THE LAKE HURON conference room with Megan's campus believers was spirited and engaging. I was more than encouraged to see that the current generation of college kids, representing the views and aspirations of most students their age, had embraced with a religious fervor many of the principles that would be required for mankind to flourish the way the Creator had always hoped during the unfolding of the 21st Century post-Tribulation world.

During the meeting, one MSU student, Grant, a music major in his junior year, shared what he and his roommates did on Halloween instead of merely getting costumed up and attending some party. Vegetarians all, they prepared a special Seder-type meal, to symbolize their reverence for Mother Earth and their desire to preserve the world's resources and natural balance.

For the first course, instead of bitter herbs, symbolizing the hardship of Jewish slavery during their years of bondage in Egypt, Grant and his friends chose mushrooms picked in the forest. While one mushroom can nourish, another, almost identical, can kill. It was a reminder that what nature provides has to be respected.

Instead of the Matzah, or unleavened bread, recalling the haste with which the Jews had to flee Egypt when they were finally freed, for Grant's Halloween Seder dinner they baked a dark, heavy, whole-grain German farmer's bread, Bauernbrot, to which they added flaxseeds, sunflower, pumpkin and sesame seeds. Hot out of the oven, drizzled with olive oil, the nourishing ingredients mixed in the dough made each slice a meal in itself. Everyone was reminded that everything we need to thrive has been provided by the plants in the world, eliminating the normal reason given to kill in order to eat.

Normally there's a bowl of saltwater on the Seder table into which Jews would dip parsley, celery, or a piece of boiled potato, symbolizing the sweat and sting of sunup-to-sundown hard labor. Feeling blessed to be free of the bondage of the Guardian's terrible rule, Grant's roommates substituted a hearty humus dip, but kept the traditional vegetables, and spoke of the many foods to be thankful for with each mouthful.

Vegans, replacing the Beitzah, or hard-boiled egg, which in the Seder meal represented an offering to God, they chose a single, beautiful, flawless, fist-sized Honeycrisp apple. Before cutting it into six equal slices, they went around the table expressing their gratitude that God intervened, saving the world from the Guardian's tyranny.

The apple seems to exist as a gift from the Creator expressly for mankind—sweet, succulent, just the right size to be picked by a human hand, and packed in a secure skin to keep it from spoiling for many days until eaten. Appealing to the senses, it looks, smells, and tastes appetizing, not to mention how nutritious it is. To his Halloween Seder gathering, the apple represented a gracious Gift from God making them want to give back a commitment to preserve the balance of life among planet Earth's plants and animals so that apples and other species might thrive.

The Seder Charoset, a brown, blended mix, traditionally made up of chopped nuts, grated apples, wine and cinnamon represents the mortar used by the Jews to build the pyramids during the hard times in Egypt. Grant's group kept that item, but added honey, raisins, apricots, dates, and replaced the wine with pomegranate juice. As they spread their version on bread they were reminded that honest labor and effort are often required to accomplish any meaningful, lasting goal or acquired expertise that can serve the greater good.

Instead of the meat portion, the vegans kept the traditional Jewish vegetarian preference of a boiled beet. Slicing in the red juice, the color of blood, evoked the notion that the nourishing plants we've been given are broken down to provide the raw materials for what makes up our bodies—as in, We Are What We Eat. A healthy body requires that we consume healthy food. On a more metaphysical level, the life force of the plant is transferred into our bodies and carried to all of our cells by the blood.

HEARING ABOUT THIS TRANSFORMATION of a simple meal into a symbolic worship service had me imagining how the faith practices of the new believers might evolve in the Kingdom Age. None of them were burdened by the dogmatic rituals of the formerly well-established religious traditions, so they were free to choose—create new worship traditions, or return to what might feel more comfortable.

So far I'd seen that old-style church buildings didn't seem to be needed by the new-age believers, and that the object of their worship seemed to be shifting from Creator to Creation; apparently a shift in focus that the Teacher actually wanted for this time. True worship would come to be expressed as reverence for the natural world.

Another MSU student at the meeting had formed an iBike club. Those who joined agreed that for an entire year they would not travel in any way that burned fossil fuels. According to their reasoning, the device they used couldn't even use a lot of fossil fuel in the manufacturing process, so that left out electric cars and even bikes manufactured in the normal way. The members of this club made their own bike frames out of bamboo and adapted used parts from other bikes for the gears and wheels.

Another student talked about a demonstration he joined outside the Apple Store in Lansing insisting that Apple management both make sure child labor wasn't being exploited during the manufacturing process for the iPhone, iPad, iPod, and MacBooks, as well as establish a policy that no conflict minerals, that is raw materials such as lithium, cassiterite, wolframite, coltan, and gold, were mined in conditions that exploit child or slave labor, or fund armed conflicts, be used in their manufacturing process.

This sort of human rights' issue was going on in the Before Times, and sadly the revived companies that were competing for the sales of their computers and smart phones in global markets were once again minimizing costs without considering the human toll taken to maximize their corporate profits.

Historically, many of the world's societies had become more humane over time. For example, foot binding, a Chinese practice which disfigured and handicapped millions of women for a thousand years, was finally abandoned at the beginning of the 20th Century. Child labor laws civilized manufacturing practices in most of the world's developed countries during the last half of that same century. Women, an exploited minority throughout most of human history, gradually had their status improved and generally arrived as equal to men in most Western societies as did racial minorities.

WHAT THE MSU STUDENTS HAD COME up with and shared with me were all encouraging signs and yet the people in corporate and political power were sadly charting a course toward ecological chaos. I was willing to try, but I wasn't nearly as optimistic as Antonio and his followers.

One thing I knew for sure, when the Teacher made His physical presence on Earth known, possibly soon, He would not be pleased that except for a relatively few enlightened souls, mankind was once again headed down the wrong path.